‘NATO has always been at war with Eurasia, err, Eastasia, err Iran, err …’

How George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’ illuminates the U.S.’s endless war on terror: here.

First, a quote from the dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell. The book is set in a fictional year 1984 (still in the future in 1948 when Orwell wrote the novel), in the dictatorial superstate Oceania (roughly, the USA plus Britain). Oceania is perpetually at war against another superstate; either Eurasia or Eastasia.

On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.

There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy. …

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs — all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

Today, in 2014, Oceania does not exist. NATO and its member states come closest to it.

This video from the USA is called 1953 Iran Coup – CIA Finally Admits Role.

In 1953, there was a democratically elected government in Iran. According to British and US oil tycoons, and the CIA, that democratically elected government ‘threatened the flow of oil to the free world‘. So, the CIA deposed the democratically elected government; replacing it with the dictatorial rule of a shah (emperor). Sixty years later, in 2013, the CIA at last admitted their role in that coup.

Who was that dictatorial emperor, helped to his throne by the CIA, Shah Reza Pahlavi?

Interview with the late Shah of Iran (circa 1975-76) regarding the need for Iran to acquire Nuclear Weapons.

Finally, the Iranian people were sick of the shah’s dictatorship. In 1979, they overthrew it. Of the various oppositional factions, Shiite Islamic religious leaders came out on top.

Oil tycoons and the CIA hated the overthrow of their old ally the shah. They helped to start a war against the new regime in Iran. Not a war with US soldiers; a war with the soldiers of the dictator of neighbouring Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein was an ally. He had ‘always been an ally’ of ‘Oceania’.

In this video, Donald Rumsfeld, later George W Bush’s Secretary of War ‘Defense’ during the Iraq war, greets Saddam Hussein.

They included viruses such as anthrax and bubonic plague, according to the Washington Post.

The extraordinary details have come to light because thousands of State Department documents dealing with the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have just been declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act.

He bitterly condemns Saddam as a ruthless and brutal monster and frequently backs up his words by citing the use of the very weapons which it now appears he helped to supply.

The question is: Why has he never said anything about his role in the negotiations?

‘Donald Rumsfeld has some explaining to do,’ a senior Pentagon official said last night, while Congressional sources said that a Senate Committee was considering opening hearings to investigate exactly what happened.

The documents could hardly have been released at a worse time for Mr Rumsfeld, who is building up troops in the Gulf in preparation for a war with Iraq that is generally expected to start in about a month.

They will also embarrass Tony Blair as he attempts to build international support for military action.

And they will cause a headache for the Foreign Office, because the news will be seen by Islamic countries as a prime example of American hypocrisy over the issue.

For years Middle Eastern countries have accused the US of double-talk over Iraq. They are bitterly critical that the American government helped arm Saddam during the 1980s in a war against Iran, which at that time Washington regarded as its biggest enemy in the region.

America’s critics are now disgusted by the way the administration has performed a somersault, and now expects them to agree that Saddam’s regime should be treated as a pariah.

This will make it even harder to persuade neighbouring states to offer Western troops bases and landing strips vital for such an onslaught.

But one thing was clear last night – President Bush will not let the embarrassment prevent him from forging ahead with his plans to attack Baghdad, and if that does happen Mr Blair will have no choice but to join him in the attack.

It was in late 1983 that Ronald Reagan made Mr Rumsfeld his envoy as the Iranians gained the upper hand in their war with Iraq.

Terrified that the Iranian Islamic revolution would spread through the Gulf and into Saudi Arabia – threatening US oil supplies – Mr Reagan sent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and keep the Iranian militants within their own borders.

The State Department documents show that Mr Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad where he had a 90-minute meeting with Saddam followed by a much longer session with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.

‘It was a horrible mistake,’ former CIA military analyst Kenneth Pollack said last night.

‘We were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department.’

On November 1, 1983, a full month before Mr Rumsfeld’s visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State George Shultz was officially informed that the CIA had discovered Iraqi troops were resorting to ‘almost daily use of chemical weapons’ against the Iranians.

Nevertheless, Mr Rumsfeld arranged for the Iraqis to receive billions of pounds in loans to buy weapons and CIA Director William Casey used a Chilean front company to supply Iraq with cluster bombs.

According to the Washington Post, a Senate committee investigating the relationship between the US and Iraq discovered that in the mid-1980s – following the Rumsfeld visit – dozens of biological agents were shipped to Iraq under licence from the Commerce Department.

They included anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare programme.

The newspaper says: ‘The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.’

At the time of his meeting with Saddam, Mr Rumsfeld was working for Searle – a company which dealt only in medicinal pharmaceuticals.

Both he and Searle made all their money from the distribution of a cardiovascular drug.

…

And no one in the US has ever suggested that Mr Rumsfeld had any personal interest at stake in the Iraq meetings.

The Defence Secretary was making no comment last night.

There was not just the Rumsfeld-Saddam scandal during the US Reagan administration. There was also the Iran/Contra scandal; in which the Reagan administration sold weapons to the regime in Iran (illegal under United States law), using the money to arm mercenaries of the overthrown Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua (also illegal under United States law).

And now, to a colleague of Rumsfeld in the Reagan administration and later in the George W Bush administration: Dick Cheney.

This video from the USA is called Cheney ’94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire.

Like Rumsfeld’s selling of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein later did not hinder Rumsfeld at starting a bloody war in Iraq, where meanwhile there were no chemical weapons any more; Cheney’s selling of nuclear components to Iran later did not hinder Cheney in advocating war on Iran, recently and while he was Bush’s Vice President. Iran, which was supposedly close to getting nuclear weapons (which Cheney’s own intelligence services denied.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (not her real name, but that is another long story), neoconservative Islamophobic pro-war ideologist, said, when interviewed on Dutch TV in 2008, that George W Bush had invaded Iraq. OK. He had invaded Afghanistan. OK. But Ms Hirsi Ali said she was not really ready to call George W Bush a good president of the USA as long as he had not invaded Iran yet.

What will Ms Hirsi Ali say now: ‘Iran is an ally. Iran has always been an ally’? I would not be that surprised.

James Stravidis, former Supreme Commander of NATO, says it is time to cooperate with Iran to achieve US interests in the Middle East: here.

“Nearly 300 armed American forces are being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets as President Barack Obama nears a decision on an array of options for combating fast-moving Islamic insurgents, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.” John Kerry has said the U.S. is open to discussions with Iran and considering drone strikes.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that Washington was willing to talk to Iran about collaborating to beat back a Sunni insurgency led by the Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has already gained control of most of Iraq’s Sunni regions in northern and central Iraq and is threatening Baghdad: here.

KERRY: IRAN FIGHTING ISIS ‘POSITIVE’ “The U.S. would be happy to have Iran’s help in fighting the Islamic State, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday in response to the news, first broken by The Huffington Post Monday night, that the U.S. has been aware of Iranian airstrikes in Iraq since at least last week. ‘I think it’s self-evident that if Iran is taking on ISIL in some particular place and it’s confined to taking on ISIL and it has an impact, it’s going to be –- the net effect is positive,’ Kerry … said. He emphasized that the U.S. was not cooperating with Iran, which is a top regional rival for most U.S. Middle Eastern allies and has not had diplomatic relations with Washington since 1979.” [HuffPost]

They may deny it but behind the scenes the West and Iran are co-operating: here.

DEPUTY Oil Minister for International and Trade Affairs Ali Majedi has voiced Iran’s readiness to speedily replace Iraq oil in the world market if Baghdad was forced to stop its exports due to its security crisis. Making this attempt to curry favour with the USA he told IRNA on Saturday that Iran could replace Iraq oil in the world market in a short time: here.

US President Barack Obama has indicated that he favors extending the six-month interim nuclear agreement the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China entered into with Iran at the beginning of the year: here.

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ALERT! This week, our champion for peace, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, will offer amendments to the defense spending bill to repeal the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq and the 2001 blank check for war. Join our 100,000+ activists for peace supporting an end to the AUMF at StopEndlessWar.com.

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The latest spate of violence in Iraq has the President and many members of Congress again contemplating military action. We’ve been through this before and the American people have spoken — to stop endless war, at some point we must stand down. To this end, I’m offering amendments to the defense spending bill this week to repeal the authorization for military action in Iraq and the 2001 blank check for war. We’re going to get our vote!

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THE government’s motives in rebuilding ties with Iran were called into question yesterday, with leftwingers suggesting that the main goal was exploiting lucrative Iranian markets.

Speaking in Tehran a day after he reopened the British embassy following a four-year hiatus, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain must tread carefully in its newly thawed relationship with Iran, but that the two countries can work together to defeat Islamic State (Isis) and fight opium smuggling.

He said Iran was “too large a player” in the region to leave in isolation.

However, the communist Tudeh Party of Iran saw through Mr Hammond’s rhetoric, particularly as he travelled to the country with a delegation of energy company bosses, including Shell vice-president Edward Daniels, and business lobbyists.

A Tudeh Party representative told the Star: “In general, we think that it is important that Iran should have diplomatic ties with all countries of the world.

“However, these should be on the basis of equal, open and transparent relations and without interference in the internal affairs of each other.”

The Tudeh representative said it was ironic that the opening of the embassy in Tehran coincided with the 62nd anniversary of the August 1953 coup in Iran.

The coup, engineered by the CIA and MI6, toppled democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and led to 25 years of pro-US dictatorship under the Shah.

The representative raised fears that Britain seeks oil and gas deals “without any regard for the rights, interests and well-being of the Iranian people.”

WIKILEAKS posted documents found in CIA director John Brennan’s hacked emails on Wednesday, showing disagreements between the top spook and the White House over Iran.

The emails, from Mr Brennan’s non-government account, were passed to the whistle-blowing website by a group of hackers.

The CIA called the hacking a “crime.”In one document, an unfinished draft, Mr Brennan argues that the US should “tone down the rhetoric” against Tehran and engage in “direct dialogue.”

He urges President Barack Obama to “hold out meaningful carrots as well as sticks.”Criticising the “gratuitous” inclusion of Iran in George W Bush’s “axis of evil,” Mr Brennan praised Iran for “helping repair the post-Taliban political environment in Afghanistan.”

Another document from a now-retired senior senator, Kit Bond, suggests to his intelligence committee colleagues that US torturers should be allowed to use whatever methods they like so long as they’re not specifically prohibited by an army manual.